Tech-Tree Contest

[Khazmo]

Objectives of the Contest:

Edit an official Warcraft 3 playable race to take on a fresh appearance.

The objective of this contest is to edit one of the existing Tech Trees (Either Human, Orc, Undead or Night Elves) in a way which turns them into another race whilst maintaining the current AI that the game already has. This might sound easy to some people, but to generate a replacement race (or just adapting the looks of the current one to the chosen Tileset, for example, an Ice themed Night Elven force) it can be pretty difficult to do it decently, but this method of race editting also opens up the contest to people who would be unable to do so normally (such as those who have great ideas, but cannot trigger or model). These races MUST suit the theme of the Tileset you choose to base it upon, and should hopefully show some marvelleous and intelligent edits.

Tilesets in this Contest:

Outland
Northrend
Lordaeron Fall

Dates of the Contest:

End date is the 1st of November, all Submissions must be in by that date.

Rules of the Contest:

- The AI of the original races must be maintained, as must the stats of the abilities used by them.
- The race must not only make sense for the Tileset it is on, but should make some sense by lore as well. So, no Techno-Elf, Pokemon or Anime races please! The race will be judged on how fitting it is.
- All public resources are available to be used for this contest, and there is no limit to how many you can use. This does mean that any models, skins or icons you make for the contest should be hosted onto the Hive before the due date.
- Public resources used should at least try to fit the art style and themes of Warcraft 3, as these editted races should feel as if they belong together with the original races.
- At most four submissions per person. If these submissions are for the same Tileset, then you cannot do duplicate edits of the same race. For example, if I editted the Outland Tileset Orcs into Fel Orcs, I could not then submit another edit of Outland Tileset Orcs into Demons, I would have to edit one of the other three races. But you can do edits of the same race over different tilesets.
- Teams of 1-3 people.
- UI and Mouse Pointer edits are not essential and shall not be given any extra marks for, but if you wish to include them, feel free.
- You can edit any parts (which leaves alot of art based edits) in the Object Editor which do not affect these stats (These apply to Buildings and Summons also):

• The abilities of the Unit (The only ability which can be added is a variation of the Chaos ability, used for aesthetic reasons only.
• The Damage/Effect of the Spell
• Health of the Unit
• Damage done by the Unit
• Unit Costs
• Unit Movement Speed
• What the Unit can Target
• Upgrades which affect the Unit
• Cost of Upgrades and their effects
• Defence value and upgrade values of Units

- No additional Triggers. My reason for this is that the winning entries for each race on each tileset shall be added to a Patch to make those races be useable on normal skirmish games.
-Ingame Screenshots of your Work In Progress should be shown in this thread, to try and keep it active and people interested.

Judges:

Either myself for all of it, or I shall at least judge how lore fitting the races are. If people wish, then Moderators could judge those other parts.

Judging Criteria:

• Useage of models and skins = 0-10 points
• Implementing of Ideas = 0-10 points
• How fitting to the lore of the Game = 0-10 points
• Use of Icons = 0-10 points
• Originality of Unit, Building and Spell names = 0-10 points

Any entries with which the AI does not work shall not be accepted as an Entry and would have to be fixed prior to the end date.

Prize:

The top scoring entries for each race and tileset will be added into a Patch which then will show the winning races when playing Skirmish maps on the specified Tilesets.

 

[Khadhar]

I think this is a fun idea, tests one's ability to make something within some confines, and also adds some variety to melee maps.

I may try and make one, but it'll suck, and I'm lazy. So we'll see.

 

[Khazmo]

Glad to know someone else is going to try. My own personal attempt shall be to turn the Human faction into the forces who fled through Portals at the end of Warcraft 2 (Thus, I'm ignoring the Burning Crusade lore surrounding those forces, as they were too clean and happy in a demonic wasteland). So far, I have made a Farm replacement model and got most of the first tier planned out.

 

[Jughead]

Glad to know someone else is going to try. My own personal attempt shall be to turn the Human faction into the forces who fled through Portals at the end of Warcraft 2 (Thus, I'm ignoring the Burning Crusade lore surrounding those forces, as they were too clean and happy in a demonic wasteland). So far, I have made a Farm replacement model and got most of the first tier planned out.

I'll take the Horde of Draenor just to counter this. That's Orc/Outland.

 

[Khazmo]

Lovely, my rag-tag Veterans of "Beyond the Dark Portal" are going to need some Orcs to slay!

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Just curious, when you say adapt it to a tileset, you mean just changing the units themselves while keeping the overall human theme for like humans, or could you go off on some tangent that's unrelated to the original race but still related to the tileset?

Ex: Taking the orc techtree and turning it into kobalds for the underground tileset
-Taking the night elf techtree and turning it into a fubolg theme for the ashenvale tilset

 

[Khazmo]

You can change it into something entirely different which fits the theme of the tileset. So, you could turn the Night Elves on the Northrend Tileset into the Blue Dragonflight, for example. As all that you are really changing, is the physical appearance of the race you play as. As stats and abilities will be pretty much the same.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

You can change it into something entirely different which fits the theme of the tileset. So, you could turn the Night Elves on the Northrend Tileset into the Blue Dragonflight, for example. As all that you are really changing, is the physical appearance of the race you play as. As stats and abilities will be pretty much the same.

Well changing abilities/stats should definitely be allowed, it wouldn't make much sense for the blue dragonflight to be using force of nature and walking on the ground.

 

[Khazmo]

If abilties and stats were changed, then that'd defeat the purpose of maintaining the AI and Balance that Warcraft 3 currently has. But using your examples, its easy to give possible ideas. For example:

You edit the Force of Nature spell to summon Crystalline Treants, have different spell effects for their birth and the spell being cast. As well as new icons, and a new name. It might be a poor idea for changing that specific spell, but with some creativity it can be done.

Also, not all moving and attacking buildings have to be Ancients. A building could be raised from the floor via magic and hover its way across to a new place to plant itself down.


This contest is really about being creative with models, textures, icons and editting stats to not affect gameplay balance but to really edit races into something different.

 

[AlienAtSystem]

• The abilities of the Unit (The only ability which can be added is a variation of the Chaos ability, used for aesthetic reasons only.

- No additional Triggers. My reason for this is that the winning entries for each race on each tileset shall be added to a Patch to make those races be useable on normal skirmish games.

I think you should be less harsh at these two points. First i think chaos is the wrong ability, since it could only change the model, which would be useless. I would suggest to allow the Sphere Ability and the Life regeneration ability (with no regen of course) to attach Effects to the units.
Same goes for triggers as long as they are only cosmetical, they should be allowed (for example, if you use a doodad as unit, you would have the annoying bug with the building still showing up in the decay. A trigger removing the units after its death and playing a death effect would make it a lot better. Or think of the Monolith Map of Blizzard. There they used triggers to attach effects to a building which had no attachment points.)
If it gets hosted, i might join. I have done a altered melee once and my test players liked it.

 

[Khazmo]

I think you should be less harsh at these two points. First i think chaos is the wrong ability, since it could only change the model, which would be useless. I would suggest to allow the Sphere Ability and the Life regeneration ability (with no regen of course) to attach Effects to the units.

I'll consider those, as they are invisible additions which can be useful. However, I dispute that Chaos is the wrong ability, as with some clever use of it, you can do some very clever and exciting changes to models appearances.

Same goes for triggers as long as they are only cosmetical, they should be allowed (for example, if you use a doodad as unit, you would have the annoying bug with the building still showing up in the decay. A trigger removing the units after its death and playing a death effect would make it a lot better. Or think of the Monolith Map of Blizzard. There they used triggers to attach effects to a building which had no attachment points.)
If it gets hosted, i might join. I have done a altered melee once and my test players liked it.

The reason for Triggers not being a part of the Contest, is due to the fact that if they were included then when I release the patch containing the winners I would have to edit every single map for those tilesets to include the Triggers. Which is a waste of time and resources.

 

[Khazmo]

Due to the fact my model of the Tent got rejected due to apparently being too simple and obsolete due to the Tent model in Wc3 already, and apparently being makeable with ingame stuff (which is utter rubbish, considering that Tent has neither a birth animation nor team colour, neither can the placement of the shield and helmet be done with ingame resources), I have posted the Tent up here for Download.

Reason being that my models used need to be available for download to be enterable into the contest.

 

[VeljkoM]

Why can't stats and abilities be changed? Blizzard AI will use them anyway. Only hero spells can't be changed. This also isn't really teach-tree contest since all you do is changing cosmetic stuff.

 

[Khazmo]

This -is- a Tech-Tree contest because it involves editting the current Tech Trees into new forms whilst not only maintaining the AI that Blizzard have made, but also their years of Balancing. Even if you are editting cosmetic stuff, you are still editting the way the tech tree appears to players even if it is still the same on a technical level.

Changing Stats and Abilities would destroy the Balance.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

The challenge would be to make it still balanced.
Anyways what difference does it make if your playing like the furbolgs, but they're just running off the night elf tech tree? It's still the night elves, your better off just playing normal bnet games that don't require you download a new map.

I like the idea of a tech tree contest, but just swapping out models and descriptions doesn't seem really any fun.